Ocean View Hotel — Attraction in Santa Monica

A lady friend and I planned a trip to LA for thanksgiving week and a few days of sightseeing. We wanted a nice location close enough to LA to be a short drive. This place popped out to me. Right across the street from Santa Monica pier and the beach. It seemed perfect. We came in late Sunday night. Check in was quick and easy and I opted to take the $10 a night credit to skip housekeeping for our 4 night stay. I prefer no housekeeping anyways. I was immediately frustrated finding out that this place has NO PARKING. Only valet parking which they charge $55 A NIGHT for. What’s worse is there’s never an attendant present past 11pm and they still charge you $25 a night to park in the garage. This seriously frustrated me as there is no parking less than a block away except across the street and it’s sketchy at best with all the homeless around and the signs posted saying no parking between 3am and 8 am. This was not mentioned anywhere in their advertising. Maybe not a big deal to some folks but incredibly frustrating to me. For a 4 night stay I’d pay $220 additional to the $1200 I already paid for the rooms. Screw that. Now more about the hotel. It is very minimalist and without a gym as far as I could tell and the offered free breakfast was at sister property about a block away. Going to our third floor room we walked through windy outdoor breezeways and it was quite cold in November though still a bit of a quaint and novel layout. The hotel was very quiet at all hours of the day as well. The room itself was mediocre at best. Very small and minimal with a balcony that overlooked the valet parking area. They do have beach facing balcony rooms but none were available at check in and I’d cry to see what they probably charge for them. The room had a very cold and sanitized feel to it. Plain with no real decorations and hard linoleum floors. There was some amenities like some chocolate and spray on your pillow sleep aid stuff on the night stands as well as a mini fridge stocked with drinks and a tray of snacks (all for a fee of course. Similar to Vegas) The only real note worthy thing was the nice Nespresso espresso machine that was free to use and included a few varieties of espresso types along with cream and sugar. There was also a bolted down safe available to use which I appreciated. Not much to talk about for the bathroom. It was small and minimal but did have a nice shower. The best part about the room and arguably most important was the single queen bed. It was nice and soft and very comfortable. One thing my lady and I absolutely hated about the room was the wooden slat blinds covering the sliding glass doors/windows. They do not keep the sun out whatsoever and the orientation of the building means that when the sun rises the room becomes full daylight inside first thing in the morning. Good freaking luck sleeping in. Very very annoying. They could at least put blackout curtains up that you can pull down if you like. It’s obnoxious how much light the wooden slats let in. This is a deal breaker for us by itself. We usually leave in the morning and stay out and about all day, but if we wanted to sleep in and stay in bed for the morning it’d be impossible to sleep much longer than sun up. All in all the hotel was decent and the few staff we saw were nice and helpful. For the price of the room I expected some more amenities and maybe a bit higher quality of a room. That being said aside from the wooden slats there wasn’t any real issues with the room and while the parking situation was frustrating and inconvenient it seems to be par for the course here in the great state of California. If you’re looking for a room right across from the pier and don’t want to spring the extra money for the really nice hotel next door this place is a decent option. While our stay was okay and didn’t have any real problems (just minor annoyances) we most likely will look a bit harder at...

Beware of undisclosed charges! We reserved a room here for two nights at $349 by calling in. They did not disclose that they charge $100 per night in fees. So our two night stay cost $914.21. Thank God I checked closely because they tried to charge me $40 more for parking and I didn't have a car there. There are 15% occupany fees per night, Downtown assessment fees, tourism fee, destination fees, Cta destination fees all listed separately per night. It was like being held up and fleeced. The rooms are really plain and the bed was sagging on one side. The TVs are small and not smart TVs either. The pictures they show make it seem like you will have an ocean view and for $914 I should have but alot of rooms face a courtyard looking down at the parking garage which is filled with loud cars that wake you up early in the morning. They seem to know this and offer you ear plugs on the night stand which is laughable. Even though the location is a couple of blocks from the Pier and lots of restaurants it also has homeless people passing by every hour and there was police tape around a crime scene across the street in the morning. So after receiving a bill that was full of ridiculous undisclosed additions I asked for the manager. There wasnt one there and it was time to leave. No one called me for 2 days and then finally Gerald the general manager called after I left a third request. I told him how unhappy I was with the charges and asked if he could justify not disclosing that until at checkout and he wasnt willing to offer any courtesy toward my bill. So I am doing my due dilligance to let you all know so you might consider going somewhere else to spare yourself my experience. Or at least make them disclose the final amount when reserving your room and make sure you have an ocean view with crime scene instead of the parking lot and use...

The property is nice and has a great location with mostly pleasant staff. But none of that really extends to the room.

For the price, you'd think a microwave and fridge would be standard. It's not. I've never stayed in a hotel room if this caliber and price that was missing those things.

The room was actually extremely average. Similar to those I've paid $60 a night to stay in (minus some standard stuff like mentioned above).

Queen beds are definitely fulls or they gave me something smaller than I reserved, but I didn't need a huge bed.

Parking was another big surprise. Over $50 to park valet and you're not allowed to choose any other option. They don't validate parking or cover any part of it. And there's nowhere locally to park overnight so just go ahead and add $50 to your room cost. This is another amenity that I've never paid separately for at a hotel of this price.

To add to that the valet person was a bit cold and didn't really seem to be following the hotel process. It made arriving a lot more confusing than it should have been.

Unfortunately no kitchen either so no room service. There are lots of restaurants around but I wasn't looking to take my kids out again after a busy day so I ended up Doordashing. Since elevators are key access I asked if the front desk could have someone bring our food up but they seemed bothered by that so I just went and got it.

Again...not a huge deal but for this price there's no concierge? Yikes.

The property is nice enough and so are the people, but the hotel isn't worth the cost. You could stay at a Holiday Inn and get the same room with more/better amenities.

They have a robot in the lobby though and my kids thought that was cool. So....if you think that will enhance your trip then there ya go!

Nice place but I won't...